Tried and tested (read: overused)

In copywriting, we have to capture attention and hang onto it. One of the greatest criticisms of marketing is that it tells people what they want to hear, rather than the truth. Here's a case in point.

I'm writing copy for a product that provides "unique professional insights."

How hackneyed is that? These days, everything's unique. In the world of self-publishing, personal branding, reality TV, make-your-own, and social media, unique is no longer a selling point. Well, it's not much of a selling point.

What is? Things that are communicated with less overused terms. Terms like:

• rare
• glowing
• compelling
• striking
  

Things like:

• intuition
• ability
• listening
• vision
  

Word choice matters. If you want people to sit up and take notice, sometimes you have to forget what's tried and tested, and instead opt for the new and far more intriguing.

And sometimes, you have to shape the truth.

The product I'm writing about actually has unique professional insights, but instead I'm calling them "rare" (a misnomer, I think), and talking about the creator's "unique perspective". It's a bit of a mashup, and it's a bit hazy on the accuracy front, but it's better than the same old, same old.

The roundup

Remember this? My Twitter experiment?

The roundup, friend, was that I quite enjoyed it. How nice to be able to rely on entertainment in my Twitter stream. How entertaining. It was a bit of a giveaway that I a) knew when to expect tweets and b) knew the plot and characters. But still, I enjoyed its execution as much as its composition.

On the downside, I felt the characterisation to be a bit thin, and timing of tweets to be a bit dubious. It was tough timing the tweets to work with the plot—and the likely schedules of human beings—in real time. But you know. Something to work on and all.

Why don't more people write little Twitter stories to entertain us? I know there are people out there who use the service simply to identify trends (yawn), but who cares? There are others out there -- people who long for a glimmer of fun and a few thrills, who would love to have a good story injected at unpredictable intervals into their everyday lives. These people would love to follow a Twitter story, wouldn't they?

Well? Wouldn't they?

Yeah, maybe it's just me.

Not the big talk

A small oratory. One to remind us that it's not the fanfare and big talk that matter, it's not the glamour—often it's not even the glittering intellect.

It's being there.

Yes, life presents unexpected circumstances, it throws up roadblocks and leaves us scrambling for solutions. That's why, if you can be there, you should: because next time you may face a roadblock that prevents your presence.

Too many roadblocks and, well, it begins to look like you're not there. It begins to look a lot like you're not there. It becomes clear that, actually, you're somewhere else entirely.

If your intention is to be somewhere else entirely, that's fine. But if it's not, then I have just two words for you:

Be there.

Most of the time, that's all that matters.

Hello, buttons

Button text I would like to see online. A few ideas. Nothing special.

Next alternatives:

• More please
  
• Hit me
• Giddyup
• Tally Ho
  
• Onward!
  

Back alternatives:

• WTF?!
• Uh oh.
• Woah Nellie
• This ain't right
  

Okay/Yes alternatives:

• Copy that, chief
• Gotcha
• Gimme
• Hit me*
  
• Yeeehaa
• Affirmative

*Yes, ambiguous: Hit me works for Okay or Next. But used consistently on site, it could work well, don't you think?

[the afternoon]

[but this time, something was different. There was no sense of desperation, just a spiralling sadness that filled the room, filled every pore of the face, every damp lungful of breath, every slow-ticking moment of the grey afternoon.

It seemed that something was incubating in that sadness. Something small scratched at the walls, tapped the window panes. The house was topsy turvy. The sky above was the colour of ashes and the air smelt of fire. Yet something grew firmer in that space. Small bones formed, blind eyes, world-weary limbs. It took time. It took stock. It took its own pace. It couldn't be rushed, just as]

International Women's Day vexations

Is there an International Men's Day? Yes, but I'd never heard of it. Read into that what you will. And into this, a selection of bits and pieces from around the web...

Avon launches digital romance imprint. Yawn. On the right of that page, you may see these lovely ladies...

(Both images from the same sidebar at fastcompany.com)

Sophie Monk splits with 50-something fiancee. Which, incidentally, I just typed as "financee". And this pic appears on the same page:

Yeah! Legs. Makeup. And a woman clutching her own chest. Getting tired? Me too.

Ho hum from the Hun. (That's right, kids: sex is never a path to revenge. Whatever that means. Thanks Suzie, or whoever subbed that headline with such mordant perspicacity.)

On what is ostensibly the plus side, the PM stands firm on carbon, but that's only really interesting from the point of view of broken election promises, poll terror, and bureaucracy moving more slowly than molasses. Oh, and the recurring thought, "I can't believe people thought she'd govern differently because she's a woman."

Yeah, so, whatever. Don't say I don't look after you. Or something.*

*Oh alright, so I don't get this shit at all. These examples are all targeted at women or a combination of women and men, and the fact that a) I am a woman and b) I don't want to read any of it only further reinforces my disbelief not only in gender targeting, but that gender actually matters at all.

Love this

Yes, a directive I'm afraid. But you will.

Recently I saw two billboards side by side at the station. On the left, a picture of a female child slave with the caption "Employee of the month"—an ad for charity. On the right, a picture of an actress wearing denim with the caption "G Star Raw".*

Side by side. It was glorious.

Two females, two advertising campaigns, two purposes, one objective: dollar$.

The marketing angle, almost unconscionably, and certainly incomprehensibly, aside for just a moment, there was something weirdly unifying about these two images, shot from the waist up.

Young women. Hope, love, long hair, dark hair, dark eyes, men, futures of a sort, death. And the futility of an optimism supposedly sated by consumption. Because we need Exhibit A in order to enjoy Exhibit B.

I'm not insinuating that G Star denim products are anything other than legitimate, of course—I'm talking about a bigger picture in which the rich and fortunate of the world are rich and fortunate precisely because they're not the poor child slaves, and must rely on those people to remain in slavery if the rich fortune is to continue.

By the rich and fortunate I mean, of course, you and I. Looking around the lifts of the glassy, glossy city office blocks, you see women in flimsy new season's $20 Sportsgirl tops and bad makeup, men in boat shoes and shiny trousers, all chatting gaily about the weekend and the office party and the broken copier on level 13.

They're all pretending that this shit matters, when what matters is that glamorous Gemma would be hauling buckets in a tin mine but for the grace of good fortune, and that we're kidding ourselves if we believe that the raise, the Audi, Lancome and the Cleo beauties, Zoo, a long board, diet beverages, Crocs, Kumfs, smartphones, the designer bike, the designer dog, the CEO's invitation to speak, the CEO's wife's outfit, manicures, hairdos, Holden Special Vehicles, a diamond, diamantes, etc. are where it's at.

Where is it at?

People. Just people. End of story.

That's what to love: that the conflicting billboards with the same objective cancelled one another out, and all that was left were two people from different continents, different circumstances, regarding me through paper eyes at Southern Cross. They and me.

They and me.

The sun shone through the architect-designed roof. I continued on my way.

*Oh, the waggery that clearly prevails at JCDecaux.